go back to the regular season and see Nash's hit on Kopecky ... Shanny explained later that the principal point of contact was on the back and his (Nash's) elbow hit Kopecky in the head on the follow through...

RoyalDude wrote:Watching the 2nd round of the playoffs makes you realize that the Canucks are not in the same league as these 8 teams. Gillis needs to awake from his coma and fix what he fucked up.

Prior to doing that he needs to acknowledge it is screwed up from him and his decisions to coaching and their decisions and to the core players not being what is needed to win. Until then it is like pissing into the wind.

RoyalDude wrote:Watching the 2nd round of the playoffs makes you realize that the Canucks are not in the same league as these 8 teams. Gillis needs to awake from his coma and fix what he fucked up.

In all fairness, I can agree with the first sentence, but not the second. The league has shifted to a big, suffocating defensive style and the team continues to hold on to a group that suits the league that was rather than the league that is. They are fortunate that they made it to the finals before the year that 'everything got nasty' in the west.

I think you can understand why Gillis would hang on to this core. It made it to the seventh game of the Cup finals. It's hard to believe that they could be that drastically different than two years ago, but the landscape has changed: they need to adapt. I'm not even sure that this year's PT winner is the right group to make it out of the west.

Puck wrote:I think you can understand why Gillis would hang on to this core. It made it to the seventh game of the Cup finals. It's hard to believe that they could be that drastically different than two years ago, but the landscape has changed: they need to adapt. I'm not even sure that this year's PT winner is the right group to make it out of the west.

I think the lesson that Gillis has to learn is that every NHL crack down on obstruction/defensive play that has occurred since 1994 has been temporary in nature. He needs to take off the blinders if he's ignorant to this fact, and he needs to build the team accordingly. The most amazing part of his post season press conference to me was that he expressed astonishment that the NHL has not maintained an emphases on "a certain style" of "skilled play". Call it what you will, but the style of hockey Gillis is talking about has never been supported by the NHL in recent history for an extended period of time.